First Day Of Winter

I got out of the car and froze to death instantaneously. My bare feet landed on the cold hard concrete, which immediately sucked all life blood and warmth out of me and straight into the stony uncaring world.

To add insult to injury, a gale was blowing so hard the casuarina trees were laying over near-horizontally. Even though it was pitch-black dark, I could tell from the white caps on the water, the sea horses of the mythology of old, that the surf was going to be shithouse, blown hell west and crooked into nothing resembling any surfable shape.

I shivered violently.

The Chief arrived and bounced out of his van, dressed in a woollen beany pulled over a thermal hat, an overcoat, an under coat, a middle coat, three jumpers, his mum’s woolly vest, long shorts (a contradiction in terms, much like, e.g., military intelligence or political integrity), and, the prize piece of his collection, double-grade Explorer socks in his sandals. Dressed to impress, for sure. Dressed to survive, definitely. Unlike me, who, reluctant to let go of the idea of summer, refuses to wear anything other than a pair of shorts, a thermal top, a watch and a headband. The Endless Summer will soon be The End Of You. Pneumonia beckons.

We stared into the dark raging cyclone myopically and glumly. There was bugger all chance of retrieving a surfable wave out of that mess.

The sunrise came creeping around the corner of the headland, and we retracted inside our collars for a bit of extra imaginary warmth, determined to see it out till the sun rose and warmed up the world. Obligingly she rose up from the ocean where she’d been sleeping, in a bed of hard steely orange tinted with burnished sharp red edges, ready to cut through marrow and bone. A true dry season sunrise, and an undeniable herald of the coming Epoch Of The Wetsuit.

My temperature dropped to 34 degrees, and finally and reluctantlyI went and retrieved a woollen jumper from my car. Upon my return we had been joined by The Gnome, a man who spends his entire life on his knees looking at other people’s crotches in the water. He expressed his serious regret at our hypothermia and took his leave, boarding the first plane for Bali. He was soon replaced by Gidget, Queen Of Summer Grace, rugged up in five black woollen cardigans, thermal slacks, and, for some reason, silver dancing shoes. They are representative of her amazing ability to dance on the water in a dazzling display of elegance and beauty. Hot on her heels came The Ripple Catcher, in his best impersonation of Tom Baker’s Doctor Who, with a multi-coloured scarf around his neck, five layers of coats and jumpers, ugg-boots and, abomination on this earth, pants. How dare he.

We shot the breeze and discussed the various point of merit or otherwise of waves, boards, fins, and women in bikinis, in a nostalgic, teary-eyed farewell to the long hot days of yore, gone for 24 hours and now but a distant memory.

It became painfully clear that no one anywhere in their right mind was going to go anywhere near the water other than to behold their own reflection in the whitewash (coming away, no doubt, believing that they, in actual point of fact, closely resemble a crambled egg). So, after all the others took their leave, bundled back into their superheated cars, shoveled snow away from around their tyres and sprinkled salt out on the road in front of them, The Chief and I resolved to warm up from the inside. Having secured a take-away cup of hot drink of some sort, we dragged our frozen selves over to a patch of sunlight near the edge of the beach, and, carefully defrosting frozen-up joints with a bunsenburner and a blowtorch, sat ourselves down.

We peered forlornly out at the water, blown hither and tither by the persistent north-westerly. Huge sprays of foam came off the back of breaking waves, feathering away into long drawn-out rooster tails by the ferocious wind.

Then Huey, God Of Surf, Small Furry Creatures And Ear Infections, turned on the show.

Before our eyes, dolphins came flying out of the water. Not one, but three, five, nine, launching themselves out of the water way behind a breaking wave, catapulting over the front of it, landing in the green, and swimming along the leading edge of the wave at breakneck speed.

Our mouths dropped open. Vital quantities of hot air escaped out of our mouths, swirling and twirling like ghosts risen from the dead, draining our life force out into the frosty world. We shut our mouths again.

Having reached the end of the driving power of the wave the dolphins turned around, and, lightning fast, swam back upstream again, or, at least, away from the beach, skirting just underneath the surface of the water, flashes of sleek blackness cutting through the green water. Disappearing from sight for seconds, only to reappear at the far side of the breakers.

That’s when we realised these dolphins were doing the exact same thing that we do when we are out there on the water. Right in front of where we were sitting lies a sandbank known as The West Bank. It is illegally occupied by foreigners from out-of-state who speak a strange unintelligible language, carry sub-machine guns around on their surfboards, and wear Speedoes on their head out of religious conviction. Needless to say The West Bank is regrettably frequently the site of terror attacks and crimes against humanity, such as dropping in in front of people on a wave, snaking other people’s waves from behind, and wearing man-kinis. Remarkably enough this bank, made of sand which is otherwise and elsewhere known for it’s quick-shifting and non-permanent quality, has held in place steadily for a year and a half now. Swell coming in from the ocean washes up against it, rises up and breaks into clean green rideable waves that run all the way down to the bottom of a cliff face. We habitually catch the waves at the top side, ride them down to the cliff edge or near to it, and then paddle back up again along the outside.

And that was exactly what those dolphins were doing right now. They caught those waves at the start of the bank, time after time again, and, leaping out, flying high to the sky individually and in groups, surfed that wave all the way down. Several of them, apparently, stopped in mid wave to have sex, and then kept going. What a life. When I grow up I want to be a dolphin.

We sat there for ages, spellbound, mesmerised by the acrobatics of those dolphins. Eventually the sun rose high enough in the sky to accrue and deliver some warmth, and, little by little, we defrosted and returned to life. After we’d watched at least 50 or 60 consecutive dolphins leap out of the waves, reaching sky high in arcs of shining, glistening perfection, we rolled our shoulders left and right, grinned madly as if just been told the Secret Of Life (We had. It’s 42. The maximum number of dolphins, apparently, that can fit on one wave all at the same time and perform a synchronised jump in perfect harmony), and stood up, happy to take our leave and get on with the day.

We might not have gotten any waves, but we had been very fortunate to watch something spectacular and unique.